How long does your Gamepad battery life last?
A single charge is suppose to last 3-5 hours, officially, but I've found that on the highest settings mine last about an hour to an hour and a half.

Does the short battery life affect your playing/gamepad use?
It does for me. Highly annoying and makes me feel like I can never get too far away from my charging cable/stand.

Here are a few reasons/situations where the battery life is a headache for me and can seriously dampen the Wii U experience:

Warning: Spoilers inside!

1) Parties

Playing Wii U games with your mates or throwing a party with a lot of games going on? My Wii U gamepad battery only last for an hour to an hour and a half, which means a lot of being plugged in. Extremely annoying and can easily put a stop to things if you can't pass the controller around (cord length and all that).

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2) Extended playing

I personally put in 2-3 hours when I decided to sit down and play a game, and if it's a really awesome game, I can stay up all night. However, as I have to keep my Wii U controller plugged in for extended playing, it really defeats the purpose of having a wireless controller. Personally, If I have to stop playing and plug in the controller, that really takes me out of the experience.

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3) Playing on the highest settings

If you want to conserve your battery, the advice is to lower the brightness setting and quality. Personally, playing on the highest settings makes the experience that much better, and if I'm going to sit down and play, I want to get the most out of it.

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4) Movies/games with the TV off

Watching a movie from bed or on the couch and you have to get up/stop watching to go plug in the power adapter. You could plug in the power before you starts, but that's insane for a wireless controller to feel like you have to plug it in before you do anything substantial with it.

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5) Playing/watching from different locations

You may want to watch/play on the gamepad from the kitchen, or a different room. But you can't. Because your power adapter is plugged into the cradle near your tv. Which completely defeats the purpose of having a wireless controller that's in-house portable.

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6) Limited electrical outlet access

It would be ideal if you had electrical outlets exactly where you need them when playing your games. But not everyone does. Part of the draw of it being wireless, ya know? There's only one part of my couch I can sit and have the gamepad plugged in and still be playing, and it's not a very comfortable position. I have the charger right by the TV, so I have to unplug the cord from the charging base, then plug it into my controller, then try and sit down. Headaches galore. Yes, power extension cords could make things ever so slightly easier, but I have a girlfriend and she doesn't like wires that show.

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For me, it's a horrible situation. Just as you get into the flow of things, it's a scramble for the charging cable. Yes, the game-pad is doing a lot, but an hour and a half to two hours is just not gamer friendly. Casual play friendly perhaps, but not friendly for any kind of extended play. Don't get me wrong, I love my Wii U. I just wish I could love it for extended plays without worrying about battery levels. Please keep in mind that even if none of these situations apply to you, they apply to many people. All of these situations apply to me and it is infuriating.

Its Nintendo's fault. I have poor battery life with my gamepad also. i just figured that I lost track of time and that I played it longer then i thought.

Nintendo used a 1500MAH battery (same MAH that Samsung Galaxy 1 phones use) thats way under capacity for a gamepad, especially since the gamepad has a huge battery slot under the cover that could fit a battery 2.5x the capacity.

Nintendo used a LCD screen rather then a Energy Efficient OLED (PS Vita's have this, the screen has awesome black level and viewing angles) or AMOLED (some android phones use this, Samsung does for theirs,they look great also)
the viewing angles suck from it being a standard LCD screen also.The PS Vita with OLED and Android phones with AMOLED have excellent to near perfect viewing angles.

Nintendo used a high performance Wireless N 5GHz chipset for the Gamepad. Wireless N 5GHz Chipsets with the performance needed to handle the streaming that it does are not exactly power efficient. This would of been fine if the battery would of been 2.5X the capacity.